Hoard consisted of 518 coins (2 Short Cross, 485 Voided Long Cross, 13 Irish Voided Long Cross, 16 Scottish Voided Long Cross and Stars, 2 Lippe Sterling imitations), found in the Church of St. Lawrence at Steppingley, (Thompson Directory #342, also NC 1914).

Tomb of Henry III at Westminster Abbey

St Lawrence Church , Steppingley

The church of St. Lawrence, rebuilt in 1860 by the Duke of Bedford and the rector, is a building of local sandstone in the Early Decorated and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel, nave, north aisle and a tower containing 4 bells : it is seated with open oak benches for 240 persons. The register dates from 1562, but is continuous only from 1647.

13th Century: The church consisted of a chancel, nave, north and south porches and west tower. It was said to be the smallest church in the county. The Gentleman's Magazine of 1849 said "it is probably the smallest in the county with a low tower not rising above the neighbouring hayricks."

1858-60: The east wall of the chancel collapses and brings down most of the church with it. The Duke of Bedford agreed to rebuild the church and commissioned Henry Clutton. Work began in December 1858 and the new church was opened on the 19th October 1860.

1912: During restoration work on the church a hoard of 13th century silver coins were found beneath the chancel floor.

from: Lawrence, L.A. & Brooke, G.C. “The Steppingley Find of English Coins” Numismatic Chronicle 1914 (page. 60)[ full article pp. 60-76] This coin falls under types 231-258 listed in the catalogue of which there were six of this variety noted.

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Douglas G. Liddell (1918/9-2003)

Mr Liddell was a former Managing Director of Spink and one of the biggest influences in British Numismatics, from his induction into Spink in 1946 right through to retirement in December 1987. He was made a Director of the company on the 1st June 1965 and Managing Director from 1977.

Ex: Reigate Hoard (closed after 1455 likely during the War of the Roses), 1990

Ex: Glendining & Co, 8 December 1992

Ex: VAuctions 237, lot 85 (closed 19 November 2009)

THE REIGATE HOARD OF
ENGLISH SILVER

In 1985 Roger Minty took up metal detecting and living in Reigate already knew of a hoard of 987 medieval coins which had been discovered there in 1972. For five years Roger carried on his hobby finding the usual everyday items such as musket balls, buttons, rings and various other items. On Saturday 22nd September 1990 Roger had two hours to kill before it went dark and so decided to go to a nearby field. A medieval trackway ran about 50 yards away and as the field was shortly to be developed, Roger felt it was worth 'one last go'. Almost as soon as he started detecting Roger picked up a massive signal but thought his detector had gone out of tune. He retuned the machine and moved on. After an hour or so he'd found nowt but junk and found himself over the massive signal again. This time he decided to dig the signal, it was going dark and he didn't have time for more detecting anyway. Six inches down he encountered hard cracked clay and carefully removed two blocks. He removed more earth and bits of pottery then found two medieval groats. Pulling away at the pottery in the hole revealed masses of coins stacked vertically in concentric circles at the botom of the hole. It was a medieval coin hoard. By 10.45 pm that night Roger had a heavy bucketful of medieval coins, silver and gold, containing about 2500 coins! Roger and the local archaeologist spent all the next day digging and checking the hole. In all they retrieved 6,701 coins, 135 gold and the rest silver. The hoard dated from 1272 to 1455 (as did the 1972 hoard) and contained gold nobles, half-nobles and quarters and silver groats, half-groats and pennies. It is the largest post-1351 UK hoard on record. One coin, a Henry 6th Leaf Trefoil half-noble, was previously unrecorded. Also in the hoard were 10 French gold saluts, 21 Scottish silver coins and 6 other non-English issues.

NOTE: This coin was never received from the dealer who posted it REGISTERED on August 28, 2009 through Deutsche Post, it was received by the USPS on August 29, 2009 and never received by me, it was lost (which is difficult to believe) or stolen though it appears only after it entered the USPS stream where it is supposed to be under "lock and key" as Registered mail. If you come across this coin, please contact me at yofijr@hotmail.com.

In the Blackmoor Hoard, 34% of the 29,788 coins found consisted of issues of Tetricus I, and 0.0063% of the coins found consisted of issues of Quintillus. (10,195 Tetricus issues found vs 188 Quintillus issues).

ON A HOARD OF ROMAN COINS FOUND AT BLACKMOOR, HANTS. by Selborne

On the 30th October, 1873, two earthenware vases (I suppose "ollse"), containing altogether, as counted by me, 29,802 coins, and which must have originally contained a still larger number, were dug up in Blackmoor Park. The spot where they were found is in the parish of Selborne, half-way between Alton and Petersfield, on the western border of Woolmer Forest, about a quarter of a mile N.W. of Woolmer Pond, and close to the point where the Gault clay, which lies below the hills connecting the North with the South Downs, joins the Lower Green sand of the forest. Within a mile of the same spot, in another part of Woolmer Forest, a considerable number of broken swords and spear-heads, &c. (all of bronze) were found one or two years before ; and at the latter place, a year afterwards, about one hundred coins of the Tetrici and Victorinus, with a few of Gallienus, were also found. In the grounds of Blackmoor House many fragments of Roman pottery, with some entire and some broken sepulchral and other vases, and a bronze enamelled cup, with bronze and iron axe-heads, and other articles in metal, have also lately been found ; and in the last century large numbers of Roman coins, of Commodus and earlier emperors, were found in the bed of Woolmer Pond ; where a few, of the same period, have also been picked up within the present century.
The two pots, in which the 29,802 coins were found, were both of the same size and form : pear-shaped, rather more than a foot high, with a maximum diameter of about a foot. The exterior ornamentation (which was slight and simple) was not the same in both. The upper parts were broken, and the lids or covers were missing. The coins in them were closely packed, and caked together with dirt and verdigris ; so as to make it necessary to have those specimens which were worthy of special attention and study {the best of which are now collected in a cabinet at Blackmoor) cleaned.from the NUMISMATIC CHRONICLE 1877, pp.90+
The Blackmoor hoard consisted of 29,773 coins dating to around AD 296. A battle in that year, probably at Woolmer, saw the troops under Emperor Constantius Chlorus defeat the army of the usurper Allectus to retake control of Britain. The hoard may have been the paychest for Allectus's troops abandoned after their defeat.

According to Robertson’s Inventory (pp.223-224):

“In 1975, the 4th Earl of Selborne decided to sell what he still had left of the hoard. Before it was auctioned by Messrs. Christie on 9 December 1975 he generously lent it to the British Museum to study for some four months and presented a selection of coins from the hoard to the Museum. Although by 1975 the find had been considerably depleted from its original total through the practice of its successive owners of making gifts from it on various occasions, there were still over 22,000 examples to be recorded. Another problem was that only about a third of the coins had been cleaned at the time of the discovery, and since the uncleaned coins were covered with a thick deposit which made them very difficult to identify it was necessary to clean them all before any work could be carried out on them….”

According to SC I, Appendix 2, pp. 66-68, "The...bronzes were apparently countermarked first with a horse head, and later with an anchor, to make them "equivalent" to later issues of similar type that had these symbols in the die. The countermarking was probably an aspect of currency regulation by the military: The Seleucid army needed to impose the use of this fiduciary coinage on the population of Ptolemaic Coele Syria during the Fifth Syrian War in order to ensure provisions for its troops." (p. 66)

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Blog last updated 25 February 2018marking 10 years of blogging 2007-2017